Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) assemblies often include a glass substrate on which is mounted an LCD element and an LCD controller chip. Such assemblies must be connected to controlling circuitry which may include a microprocessor located on an adjacent or nearby circuit board, creating a need to interconnect the LCD assembly with a circuit board on which the microprocessor is mounted.
At present, such interconnection is provided by a flexible copper circuit on polyimide film, which is adhesively secured to the LCD glass substrate. In order to make this connection it is necessary to accurately align contacts on the flexible copper circuit with corresponding contacts on the glass substrate, which requires care and precision, due to the typically close spacing of contacts.
Traditional methods of aligning mating substrates, used with conventional circuit boards have included drilling holes in the circuit board and inserting connector components through the holes. These methods are not available for glass substrates as holes cannot easily be drilled in glass without substantial cost.
Attempts to align the contacts have included aligning an edge of the flexible copper circuit with an edge of the glass substrate however, this method is unreliable as the relative positions of the edge of the glass substrate and contacts on the substrate are not accurately controlled.
What would be desirable therefore is an improved way of accurately aligning a flexible copper circuit with a glass substrate so that contacts on each can be quickly and accurately aligned and connected.